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Re: Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

The era of the dominance of cities, I think, is perhaps plateauing, if not waning. As technology makes it possible to enjoy the benefits of urban life away from the problems of urban life, cities lose much of their appeal relative to suburbs or even rural living.

Re: Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

Originally Posted by Ryan5

I don't have any contempt for Rural Americans or rural people in the slightest. They're good people. I come from them so I know they're good people. Nor do I agree with the posts outright attacking Rural Americans or rural people in general. Those posts are wrong. Rural America has its own culture that was once dominant and I respect it a great deal.

That said you and other posters take unnecessary offense at the basic issue of equal representation in government. 80%+ of America is urban or suburban. Rural America has massive undue influence in our society. Many suburban Americans or even some urban Americans like to think of themselves as "Urban Cowboys in Lexus Sedans". That's simply not true. They aren't rural just because they like going to the rodeo once a year. That doesn't make you rural. Simply because someone likes rural America doesn't mean they're rural. All I'm saying is Rural America has undue influence thanks to Americans having an obsessive "Rural Nostalgia" Complex.

You aren't "Rural" because you drive a union built, US Federal Govt. Bailed-out GMC or Ford truck..

Get real people. You aren't "Country".

If suburbanites want to identify more with rural that's their decision.

Suits me. I personally am not a suburbanite. I do not live in subdivision; I live on what's left of the family farm. My nearest neighbors are not visible from my front door. Where I am, there is no public transportation, no sidewalk, no streetlights, no strip malls or shopping centers. The closest thing to a neighborhood restaurant is a truck stop half a mile down the road. If you want anything much you have to go three miles to the nearest small town; there's not much there either besides a Dollar General, a Hardees and a CVS.

The real point is none of us, urban or suburban or rural, would CARE nearly as much who ran the government IF the government had not grown so unreasonably powerful and intrusive and manipulative as regards to the average citizen's personal life. The Founders originally envisioned a system where ordinary citizens would barely CARE who ran the Fedgov, because it would be so limited in its effects on domestic issue, and more concerned with who ran their own State and local governments.

Why would a rural person want to pay into a tax bin that would pay for city public transportation, when he personally isn't going to benefit from it? For instance...

Why try to make everyone be/live the same?

Personally, I've rarely asked for much from the government other than the basics, and to otherwise be left alone as much as possible.

Fiddling While Rome Burns
ISIS: Carthago Delenda Est
"I used to roll the dice; see the fear in my enemies' eyes... listen as the crowd would sing, 'now the old king is dead, Long Live the King.'.."

Re: Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

Originally Posted by AliHajiSheik

Clearly the bulk of people actually live in the suburbs. People who over the years who have fled the cities and those areas have slowly encroached on the more rural areas. Most people like living near bigger cities but only until recently, young people didn't want to actually live there after they left school. I think young people have begun to flock to cities because small areas have tried to become more like the suburbs.

In my own area of Philadelphia, first the people and the companies were in the cities. Then the people started moving to the suburbs so traffic to jobs was mostly toward the cities. Then the companies moved in droves to the suburbs to escape the higher taxes of the city. Then people started working in the suburbs so now traffic to jobs is mostly towards the suburbs. Now the city is enticing companies with tax abatements for companies to move back and there are small areas of the city that are becoming acceptable to surburbanites and the new graduates, but the process is much slower.

My conclusion is that the suburban areas are much more influential than both. Politically, the Philadelphia suburbs are much more influential on the politics of the state and the country than the huge cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, yet the more rural areas between the larger cities still retain influence.

Yes I know this is all true as I think most do save for fringe leftist radicals.

That said you highlight the issue yourself of suburban (key word sub-URBAN) Americans refusing to accept that they are in fact urban people ultimately. Mass Suburbia is more city than it is country. It has Starbucks. It has more foreign luxury sedans than trucks. It isn't by any measure rural. Not in culture. Not in economics. Not in who resides there. Not in location either. Most Suburban areas are closer to a city than a rural area. Yet listening to many suburban Americans talk about politics you'd think they were a stones throw away from actual rural America. They aren't. These people are wearing $75 Polo button down shirts, slacks, dress shoes yet still somehow manage to "Take Offense" at issues that economically and socially haven't related to them in generations.

Re: Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

Originally Posted by Ryan5

Yes I know this is all true as I think most do save for fringe leftist radicals.

That said you highlight the issue yourself of suburban (key word sub-URBAN) Americans refusing to accept that they are in fact urban people ultimately. Mass Suburbia is more city than it is country. It has Starbucks. It has more foreign luxury sedans than trucks. It isn't by any measure rural. Not in culture. Not in economics. Not in who resides there. Not in location either. Most Suburban areas are closer to a city than a rural area. Yet listening to many suburban Americans talk about politics you'd think they were a stones throw away from actual rural America. They aren't. These people are wearing $75 Polo button down shirts, slacks, dress shoes yet still somehow manage to "Take Offense" at issues that economically and socially haven't related to them in generations.

My point is that suburban is neither Urban nor Rural. They have escaped the true Urban because the city became less and less of what they wanted from the city.

Re: Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

My point is that suburban is neither Urban nor Rural. They have escaped the true Urban because the city became less and less of what they wanted from the city.

Now here's where I (and I think most fellow millennials) would 100% disagree with you (and I believe you are actually incorrect factually so on this).

Suburban is point in fact urban. No it doesn't have inner-city clutter (although actually that's not true, I've seen numerous city-esq high business buildings in mass suburbia just as high and big as any downtown, they aren't actually that rare). Suburbia is urban. Suburban residents simply don't want to believe it is. It has all the commercial hubs of a city. In many respects modern suburbia is the city writ large. I think in this sense this is the underlying cultural problem of America. Cities died and became the suburbs. With the death of the city came the idea for 80% of Americans residing in cities proverbial offspring, suburbs, that "Okay we aren't urban we're country people because we no longer live in cities". (Whatever that is). The truth is no they aren't. They're living in cities offspring.

-There's more Starbucks in mass suburbia than there are in most downtown's in America

-There's more fast food in suburbia than in the average city in America

It's simply not true that "Suburbia is somehow rural". It is not. It is completely urban. There are bike paths. There are parks. There are massive hospitals nicer than any you'll find downtown. The idea that suburbia is somehow "Secret Rural America" is totally delusional and frankly is the equivalent of living in a fantasy world. (Which I'd argue probably the average suburban person does live in a pseudo fantasy world. They go to Olive Garden and spend $100+ on family dinner, drive home in their Lexus's and then deem themselves country people all while being 50+ miles away from the nearest rural area.)

Oh my God!!! TREES!!!! We're in the country!!! LoL.. No you aren't. You're 12 minutes from a downtown with millions of people..

Re: Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

Originally Posted by Paschendale

We've been fighting the urban vs rural battle since the beginning of this country. It's Hamilton vs Jefferson. Urban has been pretty steadily winning the entire time. That's why we have all these nice things.

Like urban blight, air pollution, water pollution, ground pollution, congestion, smaller living space, lack of land ownership, destruction of natrual habitats, high taxes.

Re: Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

If you are in suburbia close to the city, you are more urban, as you go further away, suburbia makes way for rural... simple really/

No actually that's entirely wrong sir lol.

Suburban has the word urban in it. It doesn't ever equate to "Secret Rural area" just because you want it to. If a place is actually suburban that means it us an urban-esq commercial and economic hub, in other words subURBAN.

Re: Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

Originally Posted by Ryan5

As a political junkie this is the only real issue that actually matters as I see it. The emotion-inducing topic of Rural vrs Urban influence in America and who will essentially "win" in the future. I think it's the one issue that all others derive their inherent problems from subtly so.

Future Influence: Rural vrs Urban America. Who Wins?

For the first time in history, more people worldwide live in cities than outside them. Across the globe, urban areas add more than 60 million new residents every year. In the United States, of course, the rural-to-urban tipping point happened generations ago. Today, nearly 80 percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas). But it’s a demographic shift that’s ongoing.It’s the age of urban ascendance. But it’s also an age of urban/rural discord. In an ever-flatter world, big cities often identify more with urban counterparts halfway across the globe than they do with rural leaders just down the road. Chicago woos jobs from Shanghai, but may not coordinate with small towns in downstate Illinois. Boston aligns itself more with Berlin and Beijing than with the Berkshires.There’s always been a gulf between rural and urban America. But that rift is widening -- in politics, in funding, in economic mobility, on social issues. How government leaders respond to that rift can either help bridge the gap between cities and rural areas, or drive the country down an even more divergent and potentially debilitating path.America's Rural/Urban Divide: A Special Series

This reminds me of someone's avatar which shows an electoral map. Rural was red, urban areas blue. Apparently the belief being that Romney should be President because he won more real estate or something.